Ammon M. Tenney in Phoenix lately told the Author that the Navajo were
the only Indians who ever really fought the Mormons and the only tribe
against which the Mormons were compelled to depart from their rule
against the shedding of blood. It is not intended in this work to go into
any history of the many encounters between the Utah Mormons and the
Arizona Navajo, but there should be inclusion of a story told by Tenney
of an experience in 1865 at a point eighteen miles west of Pipe Springs
and six miles southwest of Canaan, Utah. There were three Americans from
Toquerville, the elder Tenney, the narrator, and Enoch Dodge, the last
known as one of the bravest of southern Utah pioneers. The three were
surrounded by sixteen Navajos, and, with their backs to the wall, fought
for an hour or more, finally abandoning their thirteen horses and running
for better shelter. Dodge was shot through the knee cap, a wound that
incapacitated him from the fight thereafter. The elder Tenney fell and
broke his shoulder blade and was stunned, though he was not shot.
This left the fight upon the younger Tenney, who managed to climb a
twelve-foot rocky escarpment. He reached down with his rifle and dragged
up his father and Dodge. The three opportunely found a little cave in
which they secreted themselves until reasonably rested, hearing the
Indians searching for them on the plateau above. Then, in the darkness,
they made their way fifteen miles into Duncan's Retreat on the Virgin
River in Utah. "There is one thing I will say for the Navajo," Tenney
declared with fervor. "He is a sure-enough fighting man. The sixteen of
them stood shoulder to shoulder, not taking cover, as almost any other
southwestern Indian would have done."
Apparently, on each of the visits that had been made by Hamblin to the
Hopi, he had made suggestion that the tribes leave their barren land and
move to the northward, across the Colorado, where good lands might be
allotted them, on which they might live in peace and plenty, where they
might build cities and villages the same as other people, but, according
to Hamblin's journal, "They again told us that they could not leave their
present location until the three prophets should appear again."
This was written particularly in regard to a visit made to the villages
in 1864, and in connection with a theft of horses by Navajos near Kanab.
It was found inexpedient to go into the Navajo country, as Chief
Spaneshanks, who had been relatively friendly, had been deposed by his
band and had been succeeded by a son of very different inclination.
In autumn of the same year, Anson Call, Dr. Jas. M. Whitmore, A.M. Cannon
and Hamblin and son visited Las Vegas Springs and the Colorado River,
stopping a while with the Cottonwood Island Indians and the Mohave, and
establishing Callville.